First Person: I've Given Up Looking for Full-Time Work

The relative domestic poverty of the last four years combined with zero full-time working opportunities in as long have made the search for full-time work, for me, something of a lost cause. Be it in southwestern Connecticut, southern California, South Carolina or New York City, the jobs in my skill set in the places I've lived are few and far between. Granted, my recent experience in hotel front desk work has a fairly high turnover and a near constant need, I haven't found the opportunities I've been looking for. Maybe it's just bad timing. Whatever the case, there are three main reasons why I've finally called off the search for full-time employment.

Wasted Time

While the value of time is relative, the time spent looking for full-time employment these last several years has been maddeningly frustrating. If I could be curing cancer or doing some charity work instead, my time would be better served. There have literally been days when I have sworn off all other tasks to focus in on finding a job. I have set myself up for do-or-die and I have been rebuffed time and again. The sun has risen and the sun has set and still no job has been found. In life, we only have so much time. The time spent looking for full-time work, for me these last four years, has been time wasted.

Education

My solution to my problem is that I need to change my search criterion. In order to get to that elevated level, I've decided to go back to school. I plan on working with a career counselor, figuring out where my not so obvious strengths lie and going in that direction. Life's too short to spend trying to get some bogus hourly job at some place you'll wind up hating and leaving at the first opportunity. Going back to school is the solution to my job dilemma.

Survival

The final reason I'm giving up my full-time job search is that I have still been able to survive these last four years. Granted, quality of survival is in the eye of the beholder, but I have managed thus far to not die or wind up in jail for having to steal to get what I need. The world is a dangerous place and I have been lucky enough to have the love and support of a wide net of friends and family members who have helped make this survival happen.

Of course, just surviving isn't the whole of it. You have to be happy and you have to work. Having work that I'm excited to wake up and do every morning is what I'd prefer than this constant struggle and disappointment. I have a friend in Oregon who is back in school for her master's degree, where she's studying to be a rural doctor. Were I to ask her why she would choose this path rather than more lucrative private practice, she wouldn't balk. She'd probably say that it's because she knows that there is a need for this type of practice in areas which are far from hospitals. She knows she can be of some use doing something that matters for other people.

Which, in turn, enriches the soul.

The search for jobs has made my soul feeling void and hungry.

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Apathy of the Millennials
Eddie Vedder "Longing to Belong"